Just a Little Blood
by Randomessent
Summary: Jimmy's been working on a secret poject in the bowels of his lab. And finally, one dark Sunday night before high school, his experiment is a success. And he only lost a little blood; after all, a little blood is nothing when you're creating for the perfec


Jimmy glanced down at his hand and flexed it, making the tips of his knuckles turn white. Good, he told himself, it wasn't broken. He winced, however, and swore lightly as he saw blood appearing from the hundreds of tiny cuts in his hand. He twitched every part of his body, making sure that nothing else was broken. His ankle hurt slightly, but it was moveable. He stood and dusted himself off with the back of his throbbing hand. Just another experiment gone bad. Really bad. _Good thing only I was caught in the explosion._

He had been working on it for months. It was a secret experiment, so secret that not even Sheen or Carl knew about it. Not even _Goddard_. But now look what happened. He sighed and walked over to a sink where he turned on a faucet to rinse his hands off. Just as he was about to place his hand under the cold water, VOX's voice began to echo through the room. "Jimmy, Cindy Vortex requests permission to enter." He raised an eyebrow. What could she want? He found himself pleased with the idea of having her dumped into the trashcan outside of the clubhouse, but with sudden caprice, he told VOX, "Let her in."

He stepped out of the room that lay mostly in ruins, and threw a few pillows under the lab's entrance chute, where Cindy promptly landed with an "Omph."

"What do you want, Vortex?" he asked, suddenly hiding his hands behind his back. She looked up at him and glared. He noticed she was in pajamas with a jacket. Was it that late?

'What do I want? I want to let you know that you probably woke up half the neighborhood with that explosion just now, Nerdtron, on a Sunday night with school tomorrow!" Her eyes widened quite suddenly, before she burst out laughing. "What happened to your face! What did you do, dip your head in black paint?" He turned to see his reflection in a nearby computer screen, and sure enough, his entire face was charcoal black. He also noticed little streaks of red. He turned back to Cindy and saw that she had noticed as well. She stood and moved to get a closer look. "…What happened, anyway?"

He quickly brought his hand up to wipe away the blood, only to remember that he hadn't yet washed his hands. She furrowed her eyebrows. "Jimmy, what happened? Tell me!" He moved to another sink nearby and rinsed his hands, then his face, requesting a towel from VOX. He wasn't surprised that even after being washed, both his face and hands still bled. They were, after all, cut by shards of glass and metal. He looked back to Cindy, who remained in a position of surprise. Now he glared.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you, Cindy. Anyway, if you came here to my lab just to harass me, then get lost." He stamped his foot to add emphasis, but winded up jarring his hurt ankle even more. His eyes watered slightly in pain, but he dare not show that to Cindy. Somehow, she noticed.

"Your ankle too? What, were you fighting with Butch or something? Didn't I tell you that was bad for your health?" She snickered. Jimmy grew angry.

"VOX, remove her from my laboratory." He turned when a shadow of something appeared from the darkened room he had just been in.

"Jimmy, wait!" Cindy cried. The metallic arms grabbing Cindy ceased moving.

"Jimmy, shall I keep her here, or remove her?" asked the computer patiently.

Jimmy was too distracted by the shadow moving inside the other room to really pay attention. "The first one, whatever…" The arms released Cindy, and she moved to see what Jimmy was looking at. The shadow stepped into the light, and it was a shadow no more. It was the outline of a small dog that resembled a puppy golden retriever. Wires were showing in many places, and some metal plating was missing. But the brain casket, very similar to Goddard's, was fully intact. Jimmy's eyes widened.

"Jumpin' Jupiter! It worked! Just like Goddard!" He started jumping in excitement, forgetting about his aching ankle. Cindy peered around him, and a smile met her face.

"He's sooo cute! You made him?" It was a rhetorical question and needed no answer. Jimmy stopped jumping, rubbing his ankle, but he was smiling.

"Actually," he said, "it's a her." Jimmy patted his knees with the back of his hands, saying, "come'ere, girl. Who's a good dog? You are, yes you are!" The puppy jumped around happily, barking. She stepped forward and licked Jimmy's hand, before jumping into his arms. He turned to Cindy. "I'll be right back. VOX, get a purple flurp for her, will yah?" He disappeared into yet another room as a robot hand brought down a cold can of purple flurp. Cindy took it absently, making herself comfortable in Jimmy's chair.

_Wow,_ she thought, _I've never been in Jimmy's lab since that little incident with that big-toothed Jimmy. Timmy, was it? He's made a lot of changes since then_. Cindy carefully sipped the flurp, taking in everything she saw with interest. She noticed the scorch marks out of the room the puppy had come out of. What had happened? And why was Jimmy so… bloody? Despite Jimmy's order to wait within the main room, Cindy's curiosity got the best of her, and after setting the purple flurp down on the floor, she peeked into the door that the puppy had appeared from. What she saw disgusted her.

Metal scraps covered the floor, wires, multi-colored, littered the many tables, and those connected to the wall sparked forebodingly. There were black marks all over the place spiraling outward from one of the larger tables. But what scared her the most was the blood; there was a large puddle just in front of the large table. What had he been doing? She suddenly feared being caught and returned to the previous room. She looked around with awe; it was beyond technologically advanced… space age even.

She was surprised when Jimmy emerged from the other room with what looked like a different puppy in his arms. But upon closer inspection, she found he had repaired it. He quite suddenly shoved the puppy into her arms. She looked from the puppy, to Jimmy, to the puppy, and back to Jimmy. "Wha-what't this?"

"What does it look like, Vortex? She's your puppy. Take good care of her." It took a second for everything to sink in.

"Whoa, wait, just–– just hold on a second, here! What do you mean she's mine? Jimmy, you made her… I can't accept this?" He shrugged. Cindy still couldn't believe herself. "All that trouble… if you went through all that trouble to make this puppy, why are you giving her to me?"

"Maybe it was the whole point of _making_ her in the first place." Cindy couldn't believe her ears.

"You made her for me? But… why? I mean, I'm always so mean to you, and I've never gotten you anything before, and––"

"Just accept it, damn it. I didn't go through all the trouble of making her for you just to hear you bicker on about her." His eyes gained a far away look. "I've never been able regenerate the brain neurons Goddard has in anything else. Never. All my previous attempts failed. But then I got this inspiration, a new idea. If I could first computer simulate then physically recreate the same explosion that brought Goddard to life, I thought, then maybe it would work. And lo and behold… this happens!"

"So you knew the explosion would occur even before you started!" she asked in disbelief. He nodded.

"I meant for it to be done by your birthday last week… but the blackout from that storm delayed the processing of the neurons." He scratched the back of his head, but quickly stopped after realizing his skin was still numb and sore. "Anyway, now that the experiment is a success, I need to get some sleep, and––"

"You're not going to bed with those cuts, mister. Don't even think about it." At Cindy's forceful request, Jimmy found a first aid kit and she gingerly wrapped all his wounds. It was four in the morning when she finally finished, and she clumsily and tiredly told Jimmy that she had to get home. She'd gotten less than two hours of sleep beforehand, and she was dead tired. She remembered putting her coat on, and then Jimmy, the puppy, and Jimmy's lab, it all faded to black.

She woke up to the sound of her alarm. She glanced down at her watch. "O my gosh, it's already 6:50! I'll be late for school!" She was about to crawl out of bed when she noticed something unusual. Usually, her father would have woken up by now and made breakfast. But there was no noise in the house, no smell of fresh eggs. And she glanced at her digital watch again, looking at the day. Sunday. _But…_ she thought, _yesterday was Sunday… how can today be Sunday again… Did Jimmy… alter time?_ She knew he could do it… but why do it for her? Had it all been a dream? Had her entire Sunday been a dream of Saturday night? And then she felt something warm by her side. It was golden colored, and looked just like… a golden retriever. She smiled to herself. So it _wasn't _a dream. She noticed a note on her dresser.

_Dear Cindy,_

_Her name is Terra, but feel free to name her anything else. See you at school… tomorrow._

That was all the letter read. Short, sweet, and to the point. The letter confirmed he had altered time, as well as the fact that her Sunday had _not_ been a dream. Terra. She didn't like the name very much, just like she didn't like Neutron very much. But she would let it slip by, this time. She whispered to herself, petting the small puppy lovingly; "Terra it is."


End file.
